Real Estate

Fannie Mae Announces 3.5 Percent Seller Assistance on HomePath® Properties

Incentive Part of Ongoing Effort to Stabilize Neighborhoods

Fannie Mae (FNM/NYSE) announced that people purchasing a Fannie Mae-owned HomePath® property will receive up to 3.5 percent of the final sales price to be used toward closing cost assistance or their choice of appliances. The offer is available to any owner-occupant who closes on the purchase of a property listed on HomePath.com before May 1, 2010.

“Attracting qualified buyers to the market and reducing the inventory of vacant homes is critical to stabilizing neighborhoods and helping the market recover. Many families are taking advantage of the federal homebuyer tax credit to buy a new home so this is a great time for Fannie Mae to offer some additional help,” said Terry Edwards, Executive Vice President of Credit Portfolio Management. “Homebuyers have the option to choose between financial assistance toward closing costs or new appliances for their home.”

Properties eligible for this incentive are listed on HomePath.com and most listings include detailed property descriptions, photographs, community and school information and more. In addition, many Fannie Mae-owned properties are eligible for special HomePath Mortgage and HomePath Renovation Mortgage financing which offers homebuyers an opportunity to purchase with as little as 3 percent down.

Source: Fannie Mae

Real Estate

Nevada County Home Sales January 2009 Compared to January 2010

By John J. O’Dell

The median sales price for homes in Nevada County dropped 25 percent from January 2009 compared to January 2010. Median price in January of homes sold was $320,000. In January of this year, the median price was $240,000.

Inventory dropped this January to 968 homes compared to 1,094 in January 2009. Interesting is the fact that the median price for new listings in January of this year was $329,000, indicating that perhaps some listings are being put on the market at a listing price that is too high.

Number of homes sold this January were 55 compared to 47 last January.

The median price of expired listings was $349,000 last January, maybe indicating that the listing price were too high also.  However, the homes under contract in January 2010 have a median price of $291,250.

Housing inventory dropped in January of this year compared to January 2009.  Last year we had 15.6 months of housing inventory. This year in January 2010 we had a 12.9 month inventory of homes which is an improvement.

Where’s the market going from here? Buyers are still coming into the market. Remember, although we may have an unemployment rate of around 10 percent that means that 90 percent of the people are still working.  Prices are so low in the housing market that many more people can afford to buy a house.

Data source  BrokerMetrica®

John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
General Contractor
Here to help you buy or sell real estate

Real Estate

Why It’s a Great Time to Buy a Home

By John J. O’Dell

You hear from real estate agents that this is the housing buying opportunity of a lifetime.  I’m not sure if it’s explained fully why it’s a buying opportunity.  Since I’m a real estate broker and a general contractor, I can offer my reasons why I think it’s a buy of a life time now.

To begin with land prices in Nevada County have not dropped in proportion to housing prices. A good building site is still in the upper $100,000’s.  In building a new home, you have to buy land, have plans drawn up and apply for a building permit.  The permit fees and mitigation fees can be  between $15 to $30 a square foot, depending if you are in the county or city limits. Then of course there are utilities hookup fees to pay for, the actual construction costs, and finally landscaping. When you are all through, with land, utilities, construction and landscaping you are at least $300 a square foot or more for construction of a new home.

Now houses are selling in the $75 to $150 a square foot price ranges. Houses are selling for less than you can reproduce them. Buying an existing home means you get land,  utilities are in, permits are paid for, in most cases landscaping is complete and you have no construction costs.

Having been in business for a long time, I remember well the saying (I think I made this one up), when times are good, people think it’s going to be good forever. When times are bad, people think it’s going to be bad forever. Times get bad and they get good.  Anyhow, that’s why I think it’s a great time to buy a home, investors think it’s a great time to buy a home, what do you think?

John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
General Contractor
Here to help you to buy or sell real estate

Real Estate

Banks Short Sales Equals Very Long Sales

2 Comments

By John O’Dell

I wrote an article last year that the banks were trying to make short sales shorter.  That post was based on news at that time that banks were streamlining their short sale process. Well, I think that was propaganda that was just made to make people think the banks are acting responsibly. Nothing has changed since the banks press release.

You can wait six months and not hear anything from a bank on a short sale. They even put the property in foreclosure in the middle of a short sale! I can give you several recent examples that I had with short sales, none of them good.

A 5,000 square foot house in Nevada County was a short sale. Listed at over $800,000, than dropped to $599,000, than $499,000, than finally to $399,000. One of my clients made a full price offer, but was in a backup position.  The buyers in first position, that is they made the first offer. The bank listed the property at $399,000, but then started negotiating with the buyer. The bank said (verbally)  OK we’ll take $450,000, but once the buyers said OK, the bank changed their mind and said no we want $475,000 and got it!  So much for fair dealing. By the way, 60 percent of the  buyers in second position are the ones that get the home, since the buyer in first position gives up and buys somewhere else.

I have several offers in for my clients in second position and several months later, we have not heard anything. We have an offer in for another client on an REO (bank owned home) in San Jose and we are in the second week of finding out if our offer has been accepted. The response we get from the listing agent is that the bank’s asset manager is over whelmed. I can’t give you the offering price, but you know real estate in San Jose is not cheap, yet the bank is “over whelmed”.

So what has been your experience in dealing with your bank?

John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
Here to help you with your buying or selling of real estate.

Politics

“Demon Sheep” Let the Political Games Begin!

Let the games begin! Now we again start the political cam-pain season and this little video has taken the internet by storm. It’s on the top ten twitters on Twitter. The ad, released this week by California republican candidate Carly Fiorina, takes aim at her primary opponent Tom Campbell. Ms Fiorina’s ad shows a human dressed as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” with red laser eyes creeping around a field of real sheep.

• Depicts competitor as red-eyed sheep
• May be inspired by B-Grade Kiwi horror

If you don’t want to listen to the full cam-pain ad, skip to 2:20 for the demon sheep

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7HiQRM7BA

According to the Huffington Post, the ad may be inspired by Black Sheep, a 2007 B-grade horror film made in New Zealand.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEDUDmZkyc

So, what do you think?

John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker

animals

Coyotes in Paradise – Watch Your Pets In Nevada County!

by Lisa J. Lehr

Most of us living in Nevada County moved here because we like the rural environment. Rural environments include wildlife, and that, for the most part, is a plus; however, most of us also share our lives with beloved pets, and clashes between wildlife and pets often end in heartache for the pet owner.

Coyotes are a particularly ubiquitous wild critter here in Nevada County, and pets falling prey to coyotes is a far too common occurrence. The consolation—if there is any—is that, compared to a car accident, dog attack, or abduction by a person with evil intentions, death by coyote is quick and, as far as we know, relatively suffering-free. Coyotes kill to eat, and they do it efficiently.

Still, it is heartbreaking to lose a cherished pet, and it is our responsibility to take care of them.

Coyotes are difficult to eradicate. They are becoming alarmingly unafraid of humans, with daytime sightings becoming more frequent. Trapping and relocating coyotes is not as good an idea as it may sound, as any young coyotes orphaned by this process will seek easy prey—e.g., our pets.

They can be frightened, so if you see one, try shaking a noisemaker (like a can full of hardware) or throwing things at it. Fire a Super Soaker (high-powered toy water gun) filled with water or vinegar.

More often, though, we don’t see them lurking around our property, as they are naturally nocturnal. The key to keeping coyotes away from your home (and your pets, your children, and you) is to eliminate all that attracts coyotes—mainly food. Coyotes are generalists, meaning they’ll eat just about anything.

With that in mind:

·         Keep your cats and small dogs indoors at night; your medium and large dogs, too. Coyotes hunting in packs can take down a fairly big animal.

·         Rabbits, chickens, etc. that are kept outdoors need protection: strong fencing with a top, and/or a small enclosure inside it that they can hide in.

·         Don’t let your pets’ food become coyote bait. Cats are best fed indoors, and dogs should be fed only what they will eat all at once, with no leftovers.

·         Be careful with your birdfeeders. Place them close to your house, and clean up spills. Do not feed squirrels, deer, or other wildlife. Any naturalist will tell you that birds are the only wild critters we should feed.

·         Put garden compost in enclosed bins, and gather your ripe fruits and vegetables immediately. Continue reading Coyotes in Paradise – Watch Your Pets In Nevada County! →

Real Estate

Banks Paying For Their Bad Loans

Countrywide ad before they had to be taken over by Bank of America
Countrywide ad before they had to be taken over by Bank of America

Banks are reaping what they sowed.  As you know, during the housing boom, all the banks wanted were more and more mortgage loans. They loosen the rules that  so low that credit scores did not seem to matter, as long as you were breathing and had a pen to sign mortgage documents. So now they have to buy back their bad loans!

According to the Wall Street Journal:

“The accountants at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are  auditing mortgage files to uncover loans with improper documentation about a borrower’s income, and then forcing banks and savings and loans to buy the loans back.

Freddie required lenders to buy back $2.7 billion of loans in the first nine months of 2009. Fannie Mae won’t disclose its figures, but the mortgage trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance said Fannie made $4.3 billion in loan-repurchase requests in the first nine months of 2009.”

Of course now, the banks are tightening up their underwriting for mortgage loans more carefully than they were just a year ago.  This results in a further slowing down of the lending process. Which is good and bad of course. But I think in the long run it will be better for all of us. What do you think?

Written by John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
With a background in Civil Engineering
and General Contracting

Real Estate

90 Day FHA Anti-Home Flipping Rules Eased For One Year

During the recent housing boom, many peope were buying homes, putting a little money into them and then putting the homes back on the market, hoping to make a lot of money quickly.  This is known as flipping in the real estate world.  I saw some horrible examples of flipping, with people not knowing what they were doing.  It was amazing, but everything seem to sell. Of course the market crashed and that was the end of flipping.

That is until the market crashed so badly and prices dropped so low, that smart investors with cash started buying homes, fixing them up and flipping them. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had banned flipping, fearing that people would not be able to sell the homes once they fixed them up. That is they would not insure a home that was resold within 90 days of purchasing a foreclosed home. This of course, limited the ability to sell the home to a new purchaser.

Now, in order to move foreclosed properties quickly, HUD has decided to eliminate the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 90-day anti-flipping rule. Most experienced investors, buy a home, fix them up and resell them within 90 days in this market. (Surprise?  Yes the market is changing)

For full details you can read HUD’s press release.

Written by John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker

Real Estate

Real Estate Scams Continue to Roll

I’m still receiving letters at the rate of one to two letters a week from overseas scammers  wanting to give me a portion of millions of dollars or invest in real estate. Bad English in writing the letters, promises of giving you a cut of the millions they are supposedly wanting to feral out of the county are tips enough that all these people want is to take your money. Most of them wind up in my spam folder, but you know, I have to check my spam folder to see that a client’s e-mail hasn’t gone there by mistake, so I always open them up for a laugh.

Sad to say, they make millions every year from people in America.  Here’s a video from the today show that explains a common real estate scams.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1e4CpSyCik